What Questlove did last year for a single music festival with his documentary Summer of Soul, film and cultural critic Elvis Mitchell has done for an entire decade of cinema and beyond with Is That Black Enough for You?!?, the first-time director’s new Netflix documentary.
With a focus on the 1970s, one of the greatest decades in American cinema by almost any measure, Mitchell succeeds wildly with Black Enough as a reclamation project for Black cinema of the era. His film is an erudite mix of interviews with numerous luminaries of the film and entertainment world – Harry Belafonte, Samuel L. Jackson, and Whoopi Goldberg are only a few – and incisive video essay-style film and cultural criticism from Mitchell.
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Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is destined to be remembered as the final screen appearance of the immensely talented, gone-way-too-soon Chadwick Boseman. The actor, who died in August of 2020 at the age of 43, from colon cancer, is absolutely electric in the roll of Levee Green, a trumpet player in the titular character’s band. Boseman’s performance is a testament to his formidable acting abilities and a stinging reminder of what we’ve all lost.
Aside from Boseman’s performance, there are numerous other pieces of the puzzle that make Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom a superb, taut, devastating film. The formidable presence of Viola Davis, as Ma Rainey, is one. The assured direction of George C. Wolfe is another. The powerful words and ideas of playwright August Wilson is one more.
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